Five Hole: On Mrs. Staal, Corey Perry and the league's faceoff problem

Five Hole: On Mrs. Staal, Corey Perry and the league's faceoff problem

If you’re not going to listen to your mom, who are you going to listen to?

Defenseman Marc Staal has sat for two weeks after getting hit above the eye with a puck in a game against the Philadelphia Flyers. He may yet return to the New York Rangers this season, but he still has to recover from multiple facial fractures, and his vision remains less than 100 percent. Naturally, after seeing one son suffer an injury that actually could have been even worse than it was, Linda Staal would like to see her other boys, Eric and Jordan of the Carolina Hurricanes, attach visors to their helmets and eliminate the possibility of a similar mishap.

“Mom threw out a few comments,” Jordan said. “But Staals can be stubborn sometimes.”

It is past time for common sense to overcome stubbornness. The solution now is the same as it was last season, when Flyers captain Chris Pronger was hit in the eye with a stick — he has not played since, and likely never will again. The NHL and NHLPA, two organizations not exactly known for their ability to quickly resolve easy-to-fix problems, must act to make visors mandatory for all players entering the league from here on out.

1. A grandfathered-in rule worked just fine with helmets, another basic piece of safety equipment that in no way alters a person’s ability to play world-class hockey.

2. The players entering the league who'd be subject to mandated visors have all grown up wearing facial protection. In fact, even players who don’t wear visors in the NHL are required to wear them if they are sent to the minor leagues.

The last one is pretty widely known, but somehow, it is not enough to convince everyone who plays an incredibly dangerous game to shield their faces.

“It’s one of those things that’s tough to make an excuse for,” Eric Staal said. “But right now I’m comfortable without it. Obviously I’m going to have to address it at some point and possibly go with (a visor) but for right now I’m staying with the way I have it.”

What was it that Mom always used to say? It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye? Marc Staal came close enough. So did Pronger. So did Manny Malhotra. So did Bryan Berard. So did so many others. This discussion should not have to take place again.

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Bingo!

The Binghamton Senators are two points out of the lead in the AHL’s Eastern Conference, and they also pretty much find themselves in contention for an NHL playoff spot.

With the big-league Senators missing Craig Anderson, Jared Cowen, Dave Dziurzynski, Erik Karlsson, Mike Lundin, Milan Michalek, and Jason Spezza due to injuries, Ottawa has had to rely heavily on players from its top farm team. No matter who comes up, they all seem to get the job done.

“I think every player that’s come up from Binghamton has showed us that we made a mistake sending them down in the first place,” Ottawa coach Paul MacLean said. “Whether it’s (Eric) Gryba, Dziurzynski, (Patrick) Wiercioch, (Andre) Benoit, they’ve all played very well.”

Another call-up may soon be necessary; defenseman Marc Methot left the Senators’ 5-3 comeback win over the Islanders on Tuesday night with a knee injury that will be re-evaluated on Wednesday. But having already lost the reigning Norris Trophy winner in Karlsson, the league’s hottest goalie in Anderson, and the franchise’s second all-time top scorer in Spezza, what’s a 23-minute-a-night defenseman between friends?

The Senators are fifth in the East with 38 points, and play their next four games at home, where they have a 10-1-3 record. Ottawa’s performance is hardly smoke-and-mirrors stuff, either: the Senators’ 8-5-6 record in one-goal games is pedestrian, and their PDO — an addition of shooting percentage and save percentage that averages out to 1000 league-wide with a higher figure indicating good luck — is 1000.

“Every player has been taking a step forward,” 19-year-old rookie forward Mika Zibanejad told Sporting News. “Everyone is contributing and we’re playing as a team. Even though we’ve had big injuries to key players, we just keep working, and as a young player, you try to take the opportunity and make the most of it.”

If Zibanejad and the rest of the Senators’ young players and fill-ins keep doing that, MacLean will find himself nominated for a second Jack Adams Award in as many years. Jacques Martin is the only Ottawa coach to have received the honor, in 1999.

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Over the lines

New York fans do a lot of booing, and Monday was no exception. The only difference from the usual jeering was that the bulk of it was directed at linesmen Scott Driscoll and Mark Shewchyk, not the Rangers’ perpetually frustrating power play.

Ten times, the Rangers had to have a winger take a faceoff instead of a center, including six draws for Ryan Callahan, who won four. Callahan has taken only 20 other faceoffs all season. There was one particularly zany sequence on Monday when both Brad Richards and Adam Hall were tossed from the circle, resulting in Callahan winning a draw against Alex Semin.

There was a perfectly reasonable explanation for the shuffling. “They were cheating,” Hurricanes center Eric Staal said. “What are you gonna do? That’s the rules. They were coming across the dot and their feet were over the lines. (The linesman) was telling ‘em, again and again, and they really were ignoring him, so what’s he gonna do? I do think they were calling it tighter than usual.”

Stricter enforcement of faceoff rules is trending upward after institution of a penalty this season for players who use their hand to gain possession of the puck. Last month, the rule helped cost the Nashville Predators a game when a forceful puck drop by linesman Ryan Galloway resulted in the puck bouncing off the ice and hitting the hand of center Paul Gaustad for a penalty — the Minnesota Wild scored the overtime winner on the ensuing power play. With eyes more finely attuned to the circle, it is only natural that more encroachment violations would be called.

But then, there are also times when getting ejected from the circle is anything but accidental.

“On every icing, the winger goes in (for the draw) and gets thrown out on purpose,” Islanders coach Jack Capuano said. “You see that everywhere you go. He’s getting thrown out so the center can take the draw and it buys five more seconds (after a team is not allowed to make a line change following an icing). That should be a rule that they should look at. That happens all the time. The officials, if they see something, a guy cheating once or twice, they’ve got to throw him out. I’ve got no problem with it.”

The only problem is that of all the elements for officials to follow by the letter of the law, why faceoffs? Maybe the men in stripes would better serve the game by keeping a close eye on hits like the ones by Jannik Hansen on Marian Hossa and Brayden Schenn on Anton Volchenkov earlier this season that resulted in suspensions from the league office, but no disciplinary action on the ice.

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Pay it forward

While it’s a nice sign of stability for the Anaheim Ducks to have Corey Perry follow Ryan Getzlaf’s lead and sign the club’s second eight-year contract this month, it also is worth noting — as Cam Charron eloquently did — that both players have probably already seen the peaks of their careers, and spending a combined $135 million for two players over the next eight years diverges from Anaheim’s usual thrifty operating policy.

There’s something else that’s odd, though, and that’s the fact that Getzlaf, who is working on his fifth point-per-game-or-better season in the past six years, will make less money than Perry, whose only point-per-game campaign came when he had career highs in shots on goal, shooting percentage, and time on ice en route to 50 goals and 48 assists in 2010-11, when he was named MVP. Sure, Getzlaf has never scored more than 25 goals, but he has been in the NHL’s top 10 in assists three times, and is tied for fourth this season. Shouldn’t his consistency be worth more?

OK, then. That logic is troublesome because it means the Ducks are paying Perry for past performance rather than his projected market value for the next eight years. Perry is one of three active players with five seasons of 20 or more goals and triple-digit penalty minutes, along with Scott Hartnell and Brenden Morrow.

Hartnell signed a six-year extension with the Flyers before the lockout for $4.75 million a year, starting with next season. Morrow is in the final season of a six-year, $24 million contract, the term of which has included one of those 20/100 seasons — the first year of the contract. And while Perry is a more accomplished scorer than Morrow, even if the 50-goal season is seen as an aberration, it is Morrow who should serve as a cautionary tale, having missed time over the course of his contract with groin, wrist, knee, neck, and foot injuries, while generally seeing his production dip.

The point is, physical play takes a toll, and Perry — who is currently serving a four-game suspension for a hit on Minnesota’s Jason Zucker — already has racked up more penalty minutes in his career than Teemu Selanne, 705-624. Selanne hasn’t remained a productive player into his 40s by throwing his body around with the kind of force that Perry has to in order to be effective, but Perry is going to be paid an awful lot of money to try to do it into his mid-30s.

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Mail call

“How do you see the West shaking out come playoff time? The ’Hawks have streaked ahead so far but that has obscured some solid play from the likes of Anaheim, etc. What’s your guess on how the playoffs will unfold?” – Brian, Cambridge, Mass.

The Blackhawks obscure the Ducks, but the Ducks obscure the Blackhawks, too. Consider that without Anaheim, Chicago would have a 15-point lead on the rest of the West. Meanwhile, the Ducks have as many points as the East-leading Penguins, who have won 10 straight and played three more games than their waterfowl cohorts to get to that 46-point perch.

Chicago and Anaheim are clearly the class of the West this season, so I fully expect that one of them won’t make the conference finals. Entirely because I picked the Canucks to win the Stanley Cup before the season, I’ll go with them against the Blackhawks for the conference title in a series that would be the perfect resumption of a playoff rivalry that took last year off. I also wouldn’t count out the Kings, who are 12-4-0 since the last time they played the Blackhawks.

As for the rest of the West, who knows? The word I use for the conference all the time on Twitter is Crazypants, and it applies more than ever now. What else do you call it when the Blue Jackets are tied for the No. 8 spot?